by John Gapper
“Who was the birthday boy?”
“Works in the West Wing, with the National Security Adviser. He was intending to take his present to work. This isn’t only our problem anymore, Tom. It’s out of my hands.”
Mei left the Metro at Friendship Heights and walked up Western Avenue. Drifting clouds sheltered the sun, and the breeze was cool on her face. She’d used Yao’s illicit dollars for a flight from Hong Kong to Washington, changing in Chicago, and booked a cheap hotel off Connecticut Avenue. Now, for the first time in days, the muscle ache in her shoulders had eased. For the moment, she’d escaped the humidity and terror of Guangdong.
This was how freedom felt.
She’d never been to the United States, although it was common among her university friends. The older generation were lost in wonder at how easily people of her age traveled. One graduate of Sun Yat-sen had gone to study at Georgetown, others to Yale and Stanford. Their wealthy parents had paid the fees without blinking—nothing was too much for one child. But Mei had fought so hard to get what she wanted that she would not do anything to risk it. Let others travel the world and return to jobs that had been saved for them. She didn’t have that luxury.
Walking off at Reagan National, she’d been met by nothing but an anonymous terminal with a few outlets—Starbucks, Hudson News. The other passengers had hurried past to get through immigration quickly, but she had lingered on the walkway, preparing herself for examination. Lizzie’s passport put her in the fast line with the U.S. citizens, leaving the Chinese to wait. The immigration officer, a Latino with a shining pin on his uniform, scanned the passport quickly.
“Welcome home, ma’am,” he’d said, his attention already turning to the rest of the line.
The cars went by on Western Avenue with none of the urgency of those in Shenzhen, driven by people shopping for groceries or returning from dropping their kids off at school. Mei passed a school with two buses parked outside. Through the windows, she saw lines of small children sitting at desks, a teacher bending down to check their work. It felt like an idyll—the peaceful streets and the trees with their red and yellow fall leaves. A place where everything was in order.
Half a mile on, she took out a map she’d bought near her hotel, then headed off the highway into a grid of streets lined with clapboard and brick houses with landscaped front lawns and beds of flowers. She was on a sidewalk shaded by trees, hemmed in by Hyundais and Toyotas. To her left, she glimpsed between houses to the backyards, with basketball hoops and trampolines. At the rear of one Colonial, there was a small replica of the house itself, for children to play in. She walked to the end of the street and consulted the map again. Her destination lay a few hundred feet to the left along Perth Street.
As she stood a car passed slowly, with a gray-haired woman driving. Her window was open and, as she paused briefly at the junction, she waved and smiled, displaying a bright row of teeth.
“Lizzie!” she called.
Mei smiled, not replying for fear of being identified as an impostor, and the woman drove on with a wave, leaving her frozen in the spot. Her initial plan, to take a casual look at the house from which Margot Lockhart had written to Zhu Wing twenty-three years before, evaporated. Instead of turning into the street, she kept walking, pulling up her hood as if to shield the glare. She looked left and right for a hiding place, but there was nothing. Broad lawns surrounded her, houses fenced her in from all sides. A police car drove by, Chevy Chase Village in blue on the side. One of the cops glanced at her through dark glasses as it turned two blocks ahead.
Her shoulder muscles tightened, reviving the ache. The idea that she’d escaped being spied upon by leaving China was another illusion. She sped up, walking briskly toward the end of Cedar Parkway, past large houses painted cream and white. The trees became denser here and their branches reached up, hands clutching at the sky. The street ended at a T-junction staked with two signs: red Stop and yellow Dead End. Its arrow pointed to the left, along a spur road.
The road felt like a path of no return. To her left were thick bushes leading into woods, and to her right houses with large windows overlooked her. She didn’t glance around but ran quickly, trying to figure out where the Lockharts’ house lay, a few hundred feet to her left, through the woods. She bent down, using a parked truck as a screen, and pushed through an old fence that had been crushed and split by the suckers of climbing plants.
On the far side, she found herself in a glade, her hand bleeding from a thorn bush she’d battled through. Trees reached above her, and the glade floor was carpeted with pine needles. The hissing of water intruded from a hundred feet. Looking through the trees, she saw the green fairway of a golf course, bunkers piled with white sand. The course looked immaculate, but no one was playing. A golf cart, painted deep green, was parked by a bunker.
Mei sucked the back of her hand, and a red drop welled up from the scratch. She smeared the blood and started to walk back in the direction she’d come, this time within the woods. After a few minutes, she saw the houses on Perth Street through the fences at the rear. Two gardeners trimmed bushes, one on a ladder. She halted near the house, hidden in the undergrowth.
The Lockharts’ house was double-fronted in faded red brick, with shuttered windows and a gray-tiled roof. It had a garage to one side and a lawn leading to a tennis court. Black shutters concealed the rear windows, and there was no sign of life inside. She couldn’t get close enough to raise her head above the fence, but the house looked empty. Mei sat on the forest floor and lay back, resting her head on her backpack. Sun spilled through the trees and lit her face. She felt drowsy, jet lag and sleep deprivation catching up with her.
When she woke, the sun had dropped in the sky and she was cold—her skin was pimpled on her arms. She couldn’t believe how the heat had waned, not held by clouds or humidity. Shivering, she stood and fastened the zip on her hoodie to hold in the warmth, then pulled the trench coat from her backpack and put it on. It was dim in the woods, and the windows glowed in the house. Mei stepped from the bushes and stood in the glade—invisible and unable to hear anything. She walked forty feet closer, where she could observe the house.
A conservatory at the rear led to a kitchen that looked crammed with appliances and dark oak doors. A woman was sitting by herself, both hands clasped around a mug. She was twenty-three years older than she’d been in the photo, and she looked pale and unhappy, but there was no doubt.
It was Margot Lockhart.
Mei watched her, neither of them moving. She was starting to wonder how long Margot could stay immobile when she pushed back her chair and rose to pace around. As she left the kitchen, Mei saw her climbing the stairs, her face passing a window halfway up. A light came on in the rear bedroom, and Margot’s face appeared, staring out of a window.
She was still a handsome woman. Her hair, curled in the photo Mei had seen, had straightened and her shoulders were broader. But she had the same soft features and kind face. Mei wondered if she could be seen—the woman seemed to be staring at her. But Margot didn’t shout out or acknowledge Mei. She looked so lost in thought that she noticed nothing.
The lights were on in other houses, but none close enough to be a threat. It felt as if they were joined together, Mei in the woods and Margot in her house. They had missed each other before. When Margot had driven away from Guilin with Ping, Mei had been very close. Perhaps her cries might have been heard.
Mei started to walk.
There was a door in the wall along the back of the Lockhart property. It gave to Mei’s fingers as she pushed it, allowing her to walk through onto their property easily. A wooden shed had been pitched on the land at the rear, behind the tennis court. The door was open and tools hung on pegs by a rocking horse with a straw mane. It looked like a birthday present for a little girl, long ago.
Red and yellow leaves were scattered on the court. The net was slack and a bucket of balls stood by one baseline. The rear of the house rose before her, through the court�
��s wire fence. Margot had moved from the window, and Mei could no longer see her. She walked across the lawn, not bothering to hide from view, and tried the handle. It was locked, and the kitchen was dark. She twisted the handle again, and then knocked on the window.
Mei felt a vibration in the house and a light went on in the hallway. Margot came into the kitchen and stood by a door twenty-five feet away, staring at her. Mei knocked on the glass and waved, calling out for her to open the sliding door, but Margot didn’t appear to hear. She pushed herself against the kitchen wall and turned away, running back into the hallway. Mei banged on the door in desperation, trying to make her come back, but all she could see was the half-lit kitchen. As she waited, starting to panic, a siren went off inside the house, and on her arms and hands she saw reflections of a flashing light from above. She glanced up at an alarm box fixed to the rear of the house, which was now pulsating in blue and white.
The woman must have set off a panic button inside the house, Mei realized. The trees at the rear of the yard were glowing with reflections from the alarm, and she looked around wildly, trying to decide what to do. She could run for the gate in the fence and try to get out of the neighborhood, but she would be stranded in Washington, without any idea of what to do. She couldn’t retreat, so she had to get to Margot fast—it was her only hope. She lifted a stone from the border of a flowerbed and hurled it through the pane, reaching inside to turn the key. Inside, the sound of the siren was deafening. Scrambling across the kitchen, she missed her step and sprawled on her hands and knees, then staggered to her feet and ran into the hallway and up the stairs. The first bedroom she found was at the rear of the house, where she’d seen Margot.
A shadow moved on a frosted glass door into a bathroom, and Mei tugged at the door, but it was locked.
“Let me in,” she called in English above the screaming of the siren.
“Get out.” Margot sounded panicked.
“I have to talk to you, Mrs. Lockhart.”
“Just go. My security company is coming.”
“She was my sister.” Mei put her face to the door, shouting desperately. “Lizzie was my sister. I need to talk to you.”
The siren was the only sound she could hear. Margot had gone quiet inside the bathroom. Mei looked around the room. A stone, split in two to expose a polished crystal face, rested on a mantelshelf. She picked it up and walked to the bathroom door, holding it behind her shoulder. Then she stopped. What good would it do to keep on smashing things? She couldn’t make the woman engage, inside her own home, by frightening her. She was still grieving for her daughter. Mei let the stone fall and sat on the bed, resting her hand on the silk coverlet and bowing her head. Her arrest would come soon. By tomorrow, she’d be on a flight to China.
Amid the chaos and noise, she wept, holding her face in her hands. As she did, a key turned in the door and the siren stopped. She felt the relief of silence, broken only by the chime of the door. Margot walked past her, not stopping, and went down the stairs to the hall. Mei waited for the sound of guards climbing the stairs to take her away, but all she heard was a murmur of voices. Then a man’s shoes crunched along the gravel again, his car started, and he drove away.
Mei was still crying when Margot returned to the room and knelt in front of her, pulling her hands away from her face.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I don’t believe it.”
She sat next to Mei on the bed and stroked her head, looking at her with concern. “Don’t be frightened. They’re gone,” she said. It was the first comfort Mei had felt since she’d been in Wing’s room in Guilin, and she started to shake with relief, unable to speak coherently.
After two minutes, Margot got up and went into the bathroom, returning with a handful of Kleenex.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
Mei sniffed. “I’ve been stupid.”
“You really are her sister,” Margot said in wonder.
“Her twin.”
“This is crazy.” Margot sat beside her on the bed, shaking her head. “Why didn’t they tell me?”
“You didn’t know?”
“If I had, I’d have adopted you too.”
“Would you?”
“In a heartbeat. Two cute girls. Are you kidding me?” Margot gulped as if to stop herself from cracking, and stood up. “Come on. I need a drink.”
The kitchen was huge, as if Margot were operating a restaurant from her house. There was an eight-burner Viking stove and a double-fronted refrigerator, bigger than the one they’d had for the entire orphanage in Guilin. Margot opened the oak door of a wine chiller lined with bottles. She took out a bottle and took down two glasses from a high cabinet, gesturing at Mei to sit at the island. She poured out white wine and took a gulp. Mei followed, feeling alcohol bubble through her brain.
“So who are you?” Margot said, putting her glass down.
“My name is Song Mei.”
“Like my Lizzie. Song Ping. You were in the orphanage in Guilin?”
Mei nodded.
“They never tell you anything in that country if you’re laowai. Who adopted you?”
“Nobody. Until I went to university, I stayed with Zhu Wing, the woman you met. I saw your photo together.”
“I remember her. She was nice. I was such a rookie, she had to show me how to hold Lizzie. But why did she hide you?”
“She was told to keep me secret.”
“She was? That’s weird.”
Mei hesitated. She didn’t know whether to say more, but there was a puzzle in her head. “I think your husband knew about me. He thought I was Lizzie at first, but when I explained, he didn’t look surprised—not like you. It wasn’t a shock.”
Margot tensed. “Where did you meet Tom?”
“In Guangdong, where I work.”
Margot took another gulp and placed the glass on the countertop, turning the stem in her fingers.
“So he kept you secret from me, what a surprise.” Margot’s face stiffened and the lines at her mouth became deeper. She sounded bitter. “I don’t know if he told you, Mei, but we’re not together anymore. We’ve been separated for some years now. One reason is that I couldn’t believe a damn thing he said. He always left a few things out—including women. His job was all about lying, and I guess he kind of slipped into the habit with me.”
“He deceived me. I trusted him and then he disappeared.”
Margot gave a shout of ironic laughter and said, “That’s the man I married.” She topped up their glasses.
“Tell me how you found Lizzie,” said Mei. She remembered Lockhart in the Dongguan marsh, the quiver in his voice as he’d said: I can’t. The question hit Margot the same way, and she stretched her lips back tightly, as if trying to fix a smile, and blinked a few times to clear her eyes.
“We lived in Peking. That’s what we called it then. It was where we met. I was teaching and he was at the embassy. Small world. Anyway, we got married, tried to have a child. It wasn’t working. Something was wrong.… The treatment wasn’t great. They mostly had the opposite problem. I thought maybe we should adopt, but when I made an application, it got nowhere. Constant delays. Then we had to leave.”
“Why?”
“It was 1989. We had no choice.”
“Why not?”
“What do you call it there? The June Fourth Incident. Six Four. You were a month old. I wish you had seen it. We lived in a compound in Qi Jia Yuan. Everyone was out on the streets at night, excited. We’d walk around, feeling joyful, like springtime. Then, one night, we heard gunfire. I looked out of our window and saw PLA trucks packed with helmets, on their way to kill people.”
“They arrested counterrevolutionaries who were threatening public order. No one died in Tiananmen Square.” Mei spoke automatically, not even sure whether she believed it herself.
“Are you serious?”
“I studied history.”
“I lived it.”
Mei halted before the argument go
t out of hand—she didn’t want to fall out over the past. Bad things happened in the year of her birth, but for twenty-three years, China had recovered, grown prosperous. She hadn’t asked too many questions about that time, until now.
“You left Beijing,” she prompted.
“President Bush—the father, not the idiot—imposed sanctions, and we were told to go. Tom was … Tom was a target. One day, when we were packed and ready to go. I received a call. It was the director of the Guilin home. He said they had a child for me. I hadn’t been told because of a mistake with the papers. But she was ready. I could come and get her immediately. It was kind of strange, but I didn’t ask questions.” Her lip trembled. “That was Lizzie.”
“You didn’t get a choice?”
“Lizzie was what we were given. She was good enough for me.” A tear slid down her cheek. “More than enough.” She paused, looking into her wine, as if it told fortunes. “Could I ask you something? It’s stupid, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, Mrs. Lockhart.”
“Call me Margot, please. I wanted to hold you again, if I could. It’s like holding her.”
Margot opened her arms, and Mei let herself be enfolded in them. Over Margot’s shoulders, she saw along the garden to the shed and the woods, the darkness from which she’d entered. She could feel Margot breathing against her and she thought of Lizzie’s body in the pond, the water spilling from her mouth and her hair floating on the surface. She was terribly tired, as if she could fall asleep and not wake up. She wondered if this was what life would have felt like, if she’d been chosen.
Lockhart was in the back of the van next to Sedgwick, with only a tiny slice of a view through the windshield. They had been sitting in the same position for an hour, waiting.
“I’m too old for this,” Sedgwick said.
“Quit whining. You should be happy to be out.”
“I’d rather be in a bar.”